Growing Learners

Education resources to inspire a love of learning at home.

As a parent, you are your child's first and best teacher. No one understands your child better - his strengths and needs, motivations and interests. You're uniquely qualified to know exactly which ideas or topics will capture your child’s interest and enthusiasm. And you're the best person to reinforce that continual learning is fun. Growing Learners provides practical information, ideas, and examples of how to help your child grow as a lifelong learner through discovery and exploration at home.

How to Use Household Chores to Teach Children

Scroll through our featured learning resources.

No time for flash cards or learning games? No problem. Young children learn best through real, hands-on activities anyway and your everyday routine is probably filled with them. From doing laundry to making dinner, your child is learning math, science, and literacy concepts as you work together.

Here are some tips for how to use household chores to teach kids math, science, literacy and more.

Picture books are a wonderful vehicle for boosting children's social skills. Through stories, children learn valuable lessons in character, such as honesty, bravery, and loyalty. Story characters model how to make friends and solve conflict. Picture books can even help children understand difficult social concepts, such as homelessness.

Read on for just a few of the social/emotional concepts children can learn through picture books.

Have you ever noticed that you're most likely to learn - and retain - a specific skill when you actually have to use it? You can take a class on computer programming, tax preparation, or woodworking, but unless you have regular, hands-on opportunities to practice what you learned, you're likely to forget it.

Children are no different. Worksheets and flash cards might introduce basic principles, such as adding or subtracting, but children need to use these skills in everyday life. Through these experiences, abstract concepts become concrete and meaningful, and knowledge just seems to stick better.

On the day your first child was born you instantly became a parent and a teacher. You're now wearing so many hats it's hard to keep them organized. Parent, employee, adult child, gardener, cook, partner, taxi driver and teacher…the list is endless.

Parents are the busiest people we know. Watch our webinar to learn how to make even the most routine tasks, like grocery shopping and bath time, enjoyable learning experiences for your child, and for you. It's not about quantity; it's about quality and seizing the moment.Discover proven and practical techniques to help your child learn.

Growing Learners at Home

Learn how to nurture your child's natural curiosity into a lifelong love of learning. Click on the images below.

Language development and literacy are the building blocks for school readiness. As a parent, there are simple things you can do every day to encourage mastery of important skills. For example, engage in active conversations with your child to promote her self expression and ever-expanding vocabulary. Read together daily. Offer regular opportunities to practice emerging and established writing skills.

Explore additional activities and ideas that support reading readiness at home.

Math experiences for young children often start with sorting and ordering objects and understanding patterns. As they grow, so does their mathematical proficiency - moving from counting, to numeral recognition, and then on to increasingly sophisticated mathematical concepts.

Discover more ways to advance your child's skills in math and understanding of math in everyday life.

Science experiences for young children should captivate their attention, nurture their natural curiosity, encourage further inquiry, and help them develop strategies for finding out more about their expanding world.

Parents have a direct impact on instilling a love of learning in young children. By actively creating a fun and supportive environment, where learning happens naturally, your child will stay engaged and inspired as he continually develops new skills and greater confidence.

Learn more about how to promote lifelong learning in children of all ages throughout the school year.

School readiness is so much more than knowing colors, shapes, and the ABC’s. It’s also about social skills, motor skills, coping skills, and self-expression. A school-ready child is eager to learn, willing and able to follow directions, and happily adjusted to group life in a classroom setting.